Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein)
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Gluck (Hannah Gluckstein, 13 August 1895 – 10 January 1978) was a British painter.
Hannah Gluckstein was born into a wealthy Jewish family, the daughter of Joseph Gluckstein, whose brothers Isidore and Montague had founded J. Lyons and Co., a British coffee house and catering empire. Her American-born mother, Francesca Halle, was an opera singer. Her brother, Sir Louis Gluckstein, was a Conservative politician.
In the 1920s and 30s Gluck became known for portraits and floral paintings; the latter were favored by the interior decorator Syrie Maugham. She insisted on being known only as Gluck, "no prefix, suffix, or quotes", and when an art society of which she was vice president identified her as "Miss Gluck" on its letterhead, she resigned. Gluck identified with no artistic school or movement and showed her work only in solo exhibitions, where her works were displayed in a special frame she invented and patented. This Gluck frame rose from the wall in three tiers; painted or papered to match the wall on which it hung, it made the artist's paintings look like part of the architecture of the room.
One of her best-known paintings, Medallion, is a dual portrait of her and her lover Nesta Obermer, inspired by a night in 1936 when they attended a Fritz Busch production of Mozart's Don Giovanni. According to Gluck's biographer Diana Souhami, "They sat in the third row and she felt the intensity of the music fused them into one person and matched their love." She referred to it as the "YouWe" picture.[1] It was later used as the cover of a Virago Press edition of The Well of Loneliness.[2] Gluck also had a romantic relationship with the British floral designer Constance Spry, whose work informed the artist's paintings.
In the 1950s Gluck became dissatisfied with the artist's paints available and began a "paint war" to increase their quality. Ultimately she persuaded the British Standards Institution to create a new standard for oil paints; however, the campaign consumed her time and energy to the exclusion of painting for more than a decade.
In her seventies, using special handmade paints supplied free by a manufacturer who had taken her exacting standards as a challenge, Gluck returned to painting and had another well-received solo show. It was her first since 1937, and her last. She died in 1978.
Her last major work was a painting of a decomposing fish head on the beach entitled Rage, Rage against the Dying of the Light.
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[edit] References
- O'Rourke, Rebecca. Reflecting on The Well of Loneliness. London and New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-01841-2.
- Souhami, Diana (2001). Gluck: Her Biography, rev. ed., London: Phoenix Press. ISBN 1-84212-196-0. See http://www.dianasouhami.co.uk/gluck
